A faceless figure sat at a piano beneath golden light. Long fingers glided across the keys, coaxing a melody so delicate it felt like breath made into sound. The room smelled faintly of old books. There was sunlight on wooden floors. A sense of safety he couldn't explain pressed against his chest like a hand.
He knew this place. He knew this person. He knew the song. Yet when he tried to step closer, the figure's head turned toward him. And all the warmth evaporated. His stomach plunged. Panic shot through him like cold lightning. The melody warped, distorted.
Donald jerked forward, breath sharp.
Mara leaned toward him, concerned.
"Hey....Hey Donald, are you okay?"
He didn't answer. His pulse hammered. His palms were sweating. It made no sense, why did a gentle memory scare him more than the violent ones? Mara reached out, patting his back awkwardly but earnestly, her palm warm between his shoulder blades.
"You're shaking," she said softly.
That only made it worse. He stood abruptly, chair scraping across the floor. Mara flinched.
"Donald?"
"I should…go."
"Did I say something wrong?"
"No," he said quickly.
He didn't wait for her reply. He slipped out of the auditorium, out the hallway, and into the daylight.
The school sat on a low hill overlooking most of Harlowe Ridge, the small town he'd been dropped into like misdelivered mail. The wind was cool, the smell of pine drifting in from the forest edge.
He walked down the path toward the only place he had to return to 'home,' as other people called it. A place with kind smiles, warm meals, and soft furniture. A place he didn't trust.
Two floors above him, in the main building, Principal Alden Breck stood behind the window of his office. He watched Donald's figure move across the school grounds. Watched the way the boy walked, silent, controlled and mechanically balanced.
Breck exhaled, rubbing his temple. On his desk lay Donald's file; thin, almost insultingly so. A few pages. A transfer form. A note from some orphanage no one could confirm existed. No medical history. No previous grades. Nothing that made sense.
He had tried to push. Tried to find out where the boy really came from. And then he received the phone call. Not from the orphanage. Not even from the region. From a high-ranking officer whose tone had been polite, but whose words were lead:
"Do not pursue further. The boy is placed appropriately. Any attempts to access his records will be flagged at the federal level. Your cooperation is expected."
Expected. Not requested.
Breck had hung up the phone with sweat on his palms. The kid scared him, not because of what he had done, but because of what he might be capable of. And as he watched the boy descend the hill, hands in his pockets, posture too steady for a normal sixteen-year-old, the principal had the sickening feeling that this small town wasn't big enough to contain whatever Donald really was.
Or whatever was coming for him.
The door creaked open with a soft sound he felt he had heard a thousand times, yet couldn't place. Unfamiliar familiarity washed over him, a sensation like déjà vu with teeth. The living room smelled faintly of lavender and old carpet, exactly as it always had… or at least, as he assumed it always had. The certainty felt forced. His mother, Ann, stepped in behind him, brushing past with a soft, almost rehearsed smile.
"Rough day?" she asked.
Her tone was gentle, too gentle. Like she was reading from a script designed specifically for him. He nodded and headed straight for his room, not waiting for her to continue.
The moment he pushed the door open, the feeling intensified, a childhood museum. Not a room someone lived in, but one carefully curated to resemble a boyhood he wasn't sure he had. Comics stacked in neat piles, CDs arranged alphabetically and old video games. Posters of heroes he felt no connection to. Attempts by his 'mother' to tether him to childhood.
That thought landed in his mind with a dull certainty. These weren't items he had asked to keep. They weren't things he even recognized. But his mother kept them here, maintained them diligently, as if preserving an idea of who he was supposed to be. He ran a finger across a comic's glossy cover. No dust. Everything was spotless, unnaturally maintained. 'Who cleans these?' He doesn't know, maybe his mother? He couldn't remember touching any of them recently. Couldn't remember the last time he felt nostalgia for any of it.
At dinner, the feeling didn't fade. His mother placed plates down with mechanical precision, her smile soft and constant. His father's movements mirrored hers. Even cutlery was arranged in the same angle, nods synchronized and even their breaths seemed to fall into rhythm.
Conversation was sparse. Familiar lines exchanged as though the night had been rehearsed many times. Afterward, he lay in bed staring at the ceiling.
The following morning came quickly. No surprises, the same morning light, the same greetings. Bags packed, the family moved with seamless coordination, Donald had nothing to pack. And as the engine reeved to life, he had the sickening feeling that maybe his life was a script that everyone was forced to read.
The small town rested under the last bruised shades of evening as the family car returned from their weekend trip. The kind of weekend Mark had insisted on, and Anna had tried to fill with warmth and closeness. The kind of weekend that left them tired but hopeful. Donald stepped into the house first. His posture remained straight, his expression unreadable, his movements smooth and almost disturbingly quiet.
"I'll be in my room," he said simply.
Before either parent could reply, he was already climbing the stairs. His footsteps made no sound, no creaking wood weight. Just a silent glide up the hallway until his door closed behind him.
His room was as neat and stripped-down as ever. The bed perfectly made. The books aligned with mathematic precision. No posters, no clutter, no childhood chaos. Just order.
He sat on the edge of the bed, staring straight ahead. And that was when he heard the voices.
He heard them not because he wanted to, but because he was incapable of not hearing.
His senses, sharp in ways that made no sense for a teenage boy, picked up the conversation through the floorboards with crystal clarity.
Down in the kitchen, Anna's voice broke the silence first. Soft and tired Rimmed with something like fear.
"Mark… sometimes he scares me."
Donald didn't blink.
"I know." He hesitated before continuing. "He's not a bad kid. He just, he feels far away. Even when he's in the room, it's like he's somewhere else."
Anna's breath caught slightly.
"He doesn't laugh. He doesn't cry. He barely reacts. Sometimes it feels like he's studying us."
Donald turns onto his side, eyes narrowing slightly. Not hurt. He didn't know how to be hurt. But…he felt disrupted. Disorganized in a way he couldn't catalog. His body went rigid before he forced his muscles to loosen slowly and deliberately, the way he'd been trained, in memories no child should have. He exhaled. A controlled and measured breath.
Eventually, exhaustion seeped into the edges of his mind, dragging him under. His sleep was shallow, but tactical, like drifting into low-power mode rather than resting. And then darkness reclaimed him.